freedom of speech, Constitution Day, and Turkishness

Sorry, this is a little long.

(When I started writing this post a couple days ago, I had no clue September 17 is Constitution Day in the US. You can see the Bill of Rights (amendments added to the constitution in 1791) here, including the First Amendment involving freedom of speech.)

I’ve written here about Orhan Pamuk, and I’ll write about him again soon, because I’ll hear him speak October 1 when he visits East Lansing.

Pamuk is the Turkish author who won the 2006 Nobel prize for literature. His life is threatened, he feels, after he was arrested last year for breaking Turkish Article 301 , the law against “denigrating Turkishness,” when he publicly criticized the Turks for their part in the WWI-era mass killings of one million Armenians as well as 30,000 Kurds in the 20th c. (which Turkey officially denies). Merely mentioning the “genocide” is against this Turkish law. To not be offensive, you’re supposed to call it the “Armenian question.” Charges were dropped against Pamuk in January last year, and sometime this year he moved to New York in self exile.

He moved partly because of the January 19, 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish newspaper editor, for his frank writing on the same topic. Pamuk felt threatened by the same Turkish nationalist group to which the 17-year-old who killed Dink belonged.

So, the other day I bought a Glamour magazine in line at the grocery store, and after I got home and stared at some revenge dressing and tummy flattening photos, I found an article about Elif Şafak (or Shafak), another Turkish author whose life has been threatened by the same Turkish nationalist group that killed her friend Hrant Dink and threatened Orhan Pamuk. (Look here for some stories about other inspiring women. I’ve also added the Global Diary link to my sidebar.)

Like Dink, Şafak wants Turks and Armenians to reconcile, but she understands it won’t happen until Turkey acknowledges what happened in 1915.

What does it mean to be Turkish anyway? In 1985-88 when we lived in Istanbul our lives straddled Asia and Europe: we lived in Asia and Lesley crossed the Bosphorus bridge every day to her British school on the European side of Istanbul, and Don did much of his export business from the European side. Turkey’s culture straddles Asia and Europe philosophically too, as there is a constant tension between conservative Muslim traditions and modern European trends as Turkey tries to become part of the European Union. I’m currently reading Snow by Orhan Pamuk (still, I know, I know, I started it in July), a novel about Turkish women who are torn between traditional Islam and modern Western womanhood, represented by wearing, or not wearing, head scarves, which have been banned in some public Turkish places.

Şafak’s 2006 novel Bastard of Istanbul is on my list of books to read. It’s about gender and cultural identity of Turkish, Armenian and Turkish-American and Armenian-American women, and the violence of their past. The world is changing fast, and books like this help me understand some of it.

Şafak, Dink and Pamuk risked their lives to tell the truth as they understand it.

My freedoms and lifestyle cost many people a lot. And yes, I know our rights as US citizens have been in question, especially since 9/11. But for the most part, we don’t get arrested for speaking our minds. I think Constitution Day is a good day to remember that.

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Netflix & "Best of Youth"

Netflix


We are on a Netflix plan in which we pay $15.99 monthly and have unlimited access to 3 movies at a time. Plans range from $4.99 a month for two movies a month one-at-a-time, to 8-at-a-time for 47.99. I’ve never searched a movie I couldn’t find on their list. Now, you know that isn’t true of local video stores.

If you live in the US, and you haven’t started Netflix yet, why not? We have a chance to offer friends and family a free 30-day trial until 9/30/07. If you leave a comment that you’re interested in trying it out, I’ll forward you the email offer. There are no late fees. If you don’t have time to watch a movie you’ve received for a couple of weeks, no worries.

Ok, that’s one.

* * * *


“Best of Youth” (Italian, “La Meglio gioventù”)


I had queued this long film (2 DVDs) weeks ago, and it’s been sitting unwatched next to the TV a long time. Summer is not the best time to watch lots of movies, if you ask me.

Marco Tullio Giordana directed this 2003 six-hour epic. We finished the first 3-hour DVD last night, and I’m already ready to talk about it. Even though Don slept through a few minutes here and there, he still liked it. (Hey, it was a Friday night after a long week.)

It’s about two brothers in Italy, starting in the 1960s then spanning four decades. I’m not much into epics for their own sake, because I don’t trust that the characters will be developed well enough. It’s a big commitment to watch 6 hours of one movie. But, if you like seeing modern cultural history, good-looking actors in well developed roles, people conflicted with normal issues of love, friendship and social justice, I highly recommend adding this to your queue, or asking your local video store to get it for you. The story telling and acting are perfectly executed if you ask me. I’m guessing you can get it in other parts of the world too, because it was part of the Singapore Film Festival.

I’ve read that the second half of the movie is better than the first, so I’m looking forward to watching another 3 hours tonight.

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Grapes

Hours planting: 0

Hours weeding: 0 (Don did weed once, but it wasn’t for an hour.)

Hours tending: 0 (I think. Don, did you tend?)

Hours picking: 1 (two people together)

Hours washing and stemming: 1 (times two people again)

Hours cooking, squishing, squeezing, draining, straining, canning and sweating: 4
(These 4 hours: all Don. I washed up pans, dishes, utensils, whoohoo.)

Quarts of grape juice: 13

Jars of grape jelly to come: 150 (hours expected to make the jelly: 4?)

We won’t eat enough toast or peanut butter & jelly sandwiches to consume it all ourselves. Want some? We'll gladly give you some.

We might also sell some at our upcoming yard sale in October. What would you pay for a jar of home grown organic homemade grape jelly? At this Web site it’s $5 for a 10 oz. jar. We don’t expect to get rich, but the empty jars cost about $1 each, and sugar and pectin another 50¢ each. We were thinking $3?

Maybe we'll have our first roadside farm stand! If you stick with us, this might turn into a little farm economics lesson.

But in case you were wondering, we’re not in it for the money.

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green clothes

New blogs are started every few seconds, I'm sure. I contribute to the glut. But sometimes you find one that stands out.

Lesley introduced me to an AWESOME site called Confessions of a Closet Environmentalist by two students who are doing their best to live consciously on a student budget. I was so inspired by their "Green Clothes Part I - a long lasting wardrobe" post that I followed some of their advice last night. One tip is to wash your clothes less often and air garments outside to freshen them up. Sounds like something out of the 19th century. I like that, old fashioned as I am. For inspiration and encouragement, check out "The List" where they openly keep track of what they've changed, and haven't changed, in their lives.

Funny thing is that I hung our shirts out on the porch last night, and Don's poor shirt ended up on the floor of the porch with Bishop the cat sleeping on it this morning. (You just have to keep your sense of humor.)

Yes, so Lesley and I were excitedly talking about all this on our cell phones coming home from work today, brainstorming ways we could simplify and consume less.

At the end of the call Lesley told me why she called, to tell me that she met Elie Tahari today. I used to sell his high end expensive clothes. We laughed at the irony of our "let's consume less" conversation that ended with star-struck giddiness that she had shaken hands with one of the world's premiere designers. (You just have to keep your sense of humor.)

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Tesseracts

Madeleine L’Engle died Thursday at age 88. She was born the year after my dad, two years after my mom. I read only one of her children’s books, the most famous, the science fiction A Wrinkle in Time, for which she won the Newberry Award in 1963.

The heroine of this book, Meg, is given time and space travel powers to rescue her scientist father on another planet via the tesseract.

I’ve been thinking about tesseracts for the last few days. Well, not exactly tesseracts. I’ve been thinking about doorways and pathways to be kept open.

I was talking yesterday with Inge about not being as interested in poetry as in photography. “Maybe I’ll stop going to Sapphos” (my poetry group), I said. And she said, “Why decide that? Why close the door? If you say, ‘I’ve stopped writing poetry’ on such-and-such a day, then a couple of weeks later, when you’re inspired to write one, you might say to yourself, ‘Oh, no, I decided I wasn’t going to write poetry any more.’”

Madeleine’s imagination kept doors open.

Douglas Martin in the NYT writes today that she called herself a French peasant cook, who drops a carrot in one pot, a piece of potato in another and an onion and a piece of meat in another.

"'At dinnertime, you look and see which pot smells best and pull it forward . . .The same is true with writing,' she continued. 'There are several pots on my backburners.'"

Thank you, Madeleine.

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Herb bed full

Why does everything have to be so full at the end of summer? The nasturtium leaves are piled high like lily pads overlapped.

The purple pole beans have pulled down the weather vane. He's buried, I can't even show him to you, the little sawyer. But here is an old picture before the onslaught.

The dill is as high as me.

And poor Phoebe is drowning in basil.

What is there to do but make pesto and take some to Sapphos tomorrow night for pasta, place a nasturtium blossom on each plate for garnish, share the beauty and bounty with my lovely poetry writing friends?

Oh, and I'll freeze some too, pesto that is.

There is a satisfying sadness at the end of summer. I'm trying to write a poem about it, but it's difficult to put into words.

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pumpkins

Don planted pumpkins back in June. You can see him and Lesley here examining the big leaves and little pumpkins Farm Day weekend in August. All these leaves are from just two plants! Vines can grow 6 inches in one day.



Some weeks after planting, flowers started appearing.


Each flower lasts one day.

By mid-day the flowers begin to fold in on themselves.



Every plant has two kinds of flowers, male and female. The male flowers don't become pumpkins, and there are far more of them than female flowers. Bees gather pollen from the male flowers and carry it to the female flowers.


The pollinated female flowers become pumpkins.




Don noticed this white film coating the leaves. It's a fungus, so he sprayed some organic fungicide today. I hope that does the trick.



In another week or two, we'll start cutting the stems and letting the pumpkins cure in the sun for several days. We'll decorate the farm with them and cut up a few for baking for pie, bread, muffins.

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